Dr Mohamed Najib DALY YAHIA is a professor in Marine Environmental Science at Qatar University in the Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences.

Before being hired in august 2018, he was professor in Marine Ecology and Oceanography at Carthage University in Tunisia with a background of 28 years teaching and developing research in the topic of marine plankton taxonomy and trophic-ecology, applied coastal ecology and ecotoxicology.

His research has centered on plankton diversity, numerical and trophic-ecology as well as interactions of plankton communities with environmental factors and global changes.

He has been able to show through his applied research how jellyfish abundance patterns have been changed in the South Western Mediterranean Sea and how it affected trophic food webs, zooplankton stocks (Copepods) and small pelagic fishes recruitment.

Recently his main topic was his research on ecotoxicology using zooplankton models such as the Calanoid Copepod Centropages ponticus and the Scyphomedusa Aurelia solida.

Between 2014 and 2018, he was appointed as co-director of a Joint Tunisia-French International Laboratory (LMI COSYS-MED) targeting contaminants impacts on planktonic food webs in the South Mediterranean Sea.

Supported by his team, he was the principal investigator of several bilateral and European projects such as Eur-Oceans (2005-2008), JEAI-ECOBIZ (2012-2014), Med-Jellyrisk (2013-2015) and Medcot (2013-2016).

Actually, he is developing new applied research at Qatar University on plankton taxonomy, numerical ecology, ecotoxicology and biochemical characterization of Copepods and Jellyfish.

He also implemented Zooxanthellae culture, after extracting and using Corals Endosymbionts such as Symbiodinium clades as an ecotoxicological model to test the effect of some ecological factors and contaminants such as Temperature, Salinity, Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) and Cadmium on growth rate, cell density and photosynthesis efficiency.

In the framework of 2 QNRF-UREP24 projects (2019-2020) he developed specific techniques for Symbiodinium preservation and the use of this endosymbiont for restoration of Coral Reefs bleaching in the Arabian Gulf. 

More recently, he is leading 1 QNRF-UREP28 project (2022) on Seasonal Zooplankton Diversity, Distribution and Valorization along a coastal to offshore gradient in Qatar’s Pelagic Ecosystem. He is PI of a research program with North Oil Company entitled: Whale Shark Monitoring at Al-Shaheen Oil Field System (2022-2024).

During his career he produced more than 70 peer-reviewed scientific papers and supervised 9 PhD, 25 Research and Professional Masters and dozens of Graduate Senior Projects including recently 9 at Qatar University in Marine Environmental Sciences.